A longitudinal analysis of students’ motivational characteristics in introductory physics courses: Gender differences

The lack of diversity and the under-performance of underrepresented students in STEM courses (in particular, physics) have been the focus of researchers in the last decade. Here, we present a framework for helping all students engage learn in science courses. The framework involves four factors: 1) the characteristics of instruction and learning tools, 2) implementation of instruction and learning tools, 3) student characteristics, and 4) the students’ environments. While there has been much research on factor 1 (characteristics of instruction and learning tools), there has been less focus on factor 2 (students’ characteristics, and in particular, motivational factors) and how it interacts with other factors in the framework. Here, we focus on the baseline characteristics of the introductory physics students (in particular, women and underrepresented racial minorities) obtained from survey data. A longitudinal analysis students’ motivational characteristics in two-semester introductory physics courses was performed by administering pre- and post-surveys that evaluated students’ self-efficacy, grit, fascination with physics, value associated with physics, intelligence mindset, and physics epistemology. We found that female students reported lower levels of self-efficacy, fascination, and value associated with physics than male students and these characteristics decreased significantly during an introductory physics course sequence. In addition, females were more likely to view intelligence as fixed (as opposed to malleable) in the context of physics by the end of an introductory physics course sequence. Grit was the only factor on which females reported averages that were equal to or higher than males throughout introductory physics courses. In addition, underrepresented racial minority students had lower self-efficacy than racial majority students at the end of an algebra-based introductory physics course. We also found that underrepresented racial minority students tended to view intelligence as fixed (as opposed to malleable) in the context of physics by the end of an introductory physics course sequence. The findings inform the framework and have implications for the development and implementation of effective pedagogies and learning tools to help all students learn.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author